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Christopher Unkel (cunkel@us.itd.umich.edu)
Wed, 13 Mar 1996 15:09:25 PST

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    On Wed, 13 Mar 1996, Pavel Curtis wrote:

    > > And finally, for completeness sake I suggest a tovalue() or fromliteral()
    > > builtin.
    >
    > Use eval(), as Andy pointed out.

    Correct me if I'm wrong:

    Using eval() for this allows the supposed "literal" to do things like
    call verbs, built-ins, etc., no matter how it is passed into eval.  Which
    means that if I don't want this to happen (for example, I'm converting a
    value given as a literal string inputted by a user and I don't want them
    to be able to do mischief by, for example, by calling someone's :tell.
    with a properly formatted string.)  Presumably,
    fromliteral/tovalue/whatever wouldn't allow this.

    The alternative is to perform a check to make sure that the string is
    genuinely a literal value before passing it to eval, but even a regexp for
    this is somewhat less than trivial.

      --Chris                           cunkel@engin.umich.edu
        ResComp Network Support Technician, Bursley Hall
        "Invisibility is in the eye of the beholder."
        Home Page: http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~cunkel/